Thursday, 7 June 2012

Just decided to take the plunge and re-create our school website using the possibility of creating a public space on KLP! Up until now, I have been managing both KLP and our website - too much to do!

So, with a blank canvas (so to speak) and loads of inspiration, I set to work!

Having managed to attend Tim Rylands keynote speech at therecent ICT conference I was awe inspired to get going on ‘all’ (no I know you can’t do it all at once!) his fabulous ideas.The picture above, however, was one of the easiest, most effective and versatilepieces of ICT that I have created in a while…

As Tim showed with ease the creating of a Panarama, I simply couldn’t wait!

·I stood in the best spot on our playground with trusty Flip cam in hand

·I filmed a very steady 180 degrees arc around my position

·Uploaded the image into flipshare

·Cut the various snapshots as necessary

·Opened Microsoft Ice (free download)

·Dragged in the relevant images

·Watched as in seconds the Panarama was created

·Cropped

·Uploaded it onto KLP where our new school website is being created

·Simples!

I am very impressed with the result and it looks great at the head of our new website!

Friday, 20 April 2012

WOWEE!What an amazing day we had at Swanwick Hayes yesterday! Eight of our boys year 4, 5 and 6, presented a series of work shops to teachers, ICT coordinators, Head teachers, consultants and even our KEYNOTE speaker Mr Tim Rylands - a gentleman whom both my children and I have become huge fans of! As we delivered our final workshop for the day, he was blogging to the world all about it - read about it at www.timrylands.com

Here's a snippet...it may be useful...

Our workshop delivered by myself and the boys was to entice the delegates in the wonder of KLP and how it thoroughly engages all of our children at Eureka into the digital world of learning! The power of web 2 technologies developing awe and wonder, a sfae and secure environment of an ever increasing opportunity to learn independently, push the bounderies and barriers to enjoy our time in our learning journey and be able to share it with the whole school community.The boys were sharing and explaining very confidently how powerful a tool KLP is, and all the different pages and spaces we have and continue to develop to enhance their Literacy skills across all year groups and all abilities. A truly memorable experience for both myself and the youngsters!

Next - I added some snap shots form the trailer into various wikis - children chose the characters, acted out the scene and we worked on the charactreisation, speech bubbles and then speech marks for narrative!

Resulting form that event, the children planned their films in small production teams using a film board scene planner. Great enthusiasm, team work and fabulous imagainery space events...

To complete their film, the children then had to choose - the usual - movie maker, photo story, digiblue.....or a couple of new 'free' cloud based pieces of sortware...

We tried Zooburst and Animoto! What a hit!!!! After creation, I collected the embed code, added each html code to a text editor and created our film page...

After embedding into a page full of films....I added the relevant code to each child's eportfolio too! They then have their own - to keep! Plus, invited all the school to add a film review of 2 stars and a wish to discussion board question linked to the film camera! You could easilly do this to a survey too! And be more specific with the questions!!!

A super literacy topic - that encompassed so so much more...bets of it was the whole class -mainly BOYS - were VERY engaged!!!!!!

Sunday, 25 September 2011

Using a wiki page Library has got to be one of the easiest of the web 2 technologies on any Learning Platform! [[title]] what could be easier than this to create a new virtual page???

My new Learning team (year 4 and 5) - who have had some exposure to wikis in their previous Learning team, have taken to creating their own pages like a duck to water!

New year - so new wiki library -

Ecologists wiki library 2011-12

[[Literacy]]

[[Write on Reading]]

[[Fire it Up!]]

[[Home Learning]]

The above just being the basic 'contents' or Home page to start with...

[[Poetry]]

was added to the Literacy page...

[[Canary]]

[[Jetsam]]

[[Our own poems]]

Then added to that...(for those of you that are new to creating wikis - the [[ ]] surrounding the title tells KLP that this is a new page!) Canary and Jetsam being poems we were studying, so this was available for IWB, the children during their learning, at home and so on...

In the Our own poems page, the whole class then went into 'edit' and created their own pages...

Our own poems

[[Bill]] [[Bob]] [[Bert]] [[Betty]] and so on....

They then have their own contents page in which to create their pages for their learning...we made a special point about them being very careful NOT to name ANY page the same or the same as anyone else...for example...if Bill was writing his own version of Canary, his page would be

Friday, 2 September 2011

It was only three and a half years ago that the acronym ‘KLP’ first fell on my (not so deaf) ears. I had heard of the ‘forward thinking’ schools, which were already throwing phrases such as ‘digital native’ and ‘learning platform’ around the staff room as a natural part of day to day lingo, but had never considered that could be us!
Then the journey began….one day myself and my ICT leader, along with fellow colleagues were sitting in the procurement room debating the pros and cons of each learning platform (myself with very little clue being gently guided by my techie friend!!) and the next......here we are with a fully integrated, secure learning platform, enjoyed by our pupils, staff, parents and even the Governing body that fully enhances Teaching and Learning at our school!
When asked to write this piece, I started to consider how we actually got to where we are today. After much thought, decided it was due to a recipe of inspirational leadership from the school’s ICT leader, staff who are always willing to ‘give it a go’, well planned CPD, careful ongoing support, enthused children and parents that didn’t mind being gently nagged.
Then finally me, the head….basically the ‘yes’ man, or should I say woman, who agreed to the inspirational leadership of my ICT leader to manifest itself every day in the life of Eureka.
Do I regret it? Not one bit!....I will say ‘yes’ a thousand times over, if it generates the enthusiasm and learning opportunities that has occurred so far at our school. To be quite frank, I would say a thousand times ‘yes’ for you too, if I thought it would open your eyes fully to the potential that this safe, online space has.
So how has it been used at Eureka?
In lessons KLP is the home to learning journeys, web links, web conferences, wikis, blogs, questionnaires, quizzes, games, home learning, video clips, personalised work spaces to name a few.
However, KLP in my opinion can go far beyond…..creating pupil assessment evidence portfolios linked to APP, holding pupil data, organising parent and pupil questionnaires, a forum for our school ministers and ‘Team 007’ a pupil learning and teaching team, all of which can be created by staff and in many cases the pupils themselves.Then of course there are the staff and governors spaces which hold the key to all school documentation, allowing us to use this space to communicate and collaborate daily, as well as delivering staff and Governors meetings. The parent space has a wealth of opportunities with regular blogs as to the learning which is occurring in the school, newsletters, notices and live areas during residential visits that means the parents don’t need to miss out on what their child is doing when away from home for the first time.
Do I think we have exhausted KLP? Absolutely not, I welcome with open arms any future developments, and if I may give you tips to success:
Trust your colleagues, they often know more than you!
Don’t be cautious; be considered, there is a difference!
Listen to the children….they will tell you!
And finally…….
Be a ‘yes’ man (or woman!), open your eyes….and enjoy!"